WordLo

tratto da: Il Sole 24 Ore

Spesso rispecchiano in modo semplice ed efficace una loro peculiarità come nel caso di «Information silos» o «Sistem-on-a-chip»; altre volte nascono dalla fusione di più termini o concetti (E-book, Cyberwar e Micro web tv), ma non ci si deve sorprendere più di tanto se Avatar affonda le sue radici nella religione induista e «Tragedy of the Commons» risale alla tradizione giuridica anglosassone. E forse non tutti si rendono conto che quell'irrinunciabile voglia di consultare la posta elettronica, partecipare ai social network, navigare sul web sempre e in ogni occasione può nascondere un disturbo nervoso dal nome quasi impronunciabile: Discomgoogolation, ovvero sindrome da astinenza da internet, che si contrappone ad «always on», la possibilità di essere sempre connessi al web.
Invece sono tutti ancora da scoprire l'accoglienza e l'impatto che avrà il futuribile attuatore a impulsi neurali, (Neural impulse actuator), la nuova frontiera del "dial…

da: Il Sole 24 Ore

Su Facebook, riserva dove proliferano i difensori di qualsiasi cosa, dai pini montani agli aeroporti milanesi, poteva mancare il gruppo di difensori della lingua italiana? No. Infatti, ecco il gruppo "Aboliamo i neologismi e gli stranierismi", dove si leggono appelli per sostituire la parola "cocktail" con un futuristico "polibibita" oppure per usare una semplice e pulita "notizia" al posto di "news".
Ma i neologismi, quelli sì che è difficile abolirli, anche perché la creazione della lingua è anarchica, le parole si autogenerano e diffondono in modo virale, incensurabile e incontrollabile, fino a consacrarsi termini ufficiali quando entrano nelle pagine dei vocabolari. Il Devoto Oli versione 2010 ne contiene 500 in più rispetto all'edizione 2009, più o meno lo stesso numero del Garzanti, mentre lo Zingarelli ne propone addirittura 1200.
L'ufficio – assieme alle aule scolastiche - è uno dei laboratori prediletti…

Ten years ago, no one had heard of “H1N1″, “Web 2.0″, “n00b”, or talked about “de-friending” someone on “Twitter” or “Facebook”.

Now these are part of people’s everyday vocabulary.The world is changing. Inevitably, so are our words.The English language is going through an explosion of word creation. New words are coined – some, like “n00b”, may not even look like words; old words take on new meanings – “twitter” today bears little relation to the Middle English twiteren. According to the Global Language Monitor (GLM), in 2009 the English language tipped the scales with a vocabulary of one million words. Not good news for the 250 million people acquiring English in China.

GLM, the San Diego-based language watcher, publishes annual lists of top words and phrases by tracking words in the global print and electronic media, the Internet, blogs, and social media such as Twitter and YouTube.

Each year’s list reflects major concerns and changes taking place that year. For instance, from the 2…

published on: Global Language Monitor

In conjunction with the SXSW Interactive conference held in its hometown, The Global Language Monitor has released the most confusing high tech buzzwords of the decade (2000-2009). Topping the list are HTTP, Flash, God Particle, Cloud Computing, and Plasma (as in plasma TV). Rounding out the Top Ten were IPOD/IPAD, Megapixel, Nano, Resonate and Virtualization.The most confusing Acronym for the decade was SOA (Service Oriented Architecture).“SXSW has long been a harbinger for future directions in popular culture and now the gathering has taken on the added dimension of technological innovation,” said Paul JJ Payack, president of the Global Language Monitor, “The words we use in high technology continue to become even more obtuse even as they move out of the realm of jargon and into the language at large.”The Global Language Monitor uses a proprietary algorithm, the Predictive Quantities Indicator (PQI) to track the frequency of words and phrases in …

Published on: NYTimes

EVERYBODY has his own tale of terrible translation to tell — an incomprehensible restaurant menu in Croatia, a comically illiterate warning sign on a French beach. “Human-engineered” translation is just as inadequate in more important domains. In our courts and hospitals, in the military and security services, underpaid and overworked translators make muddles out of millions of vital interactions. Machine translation can certainly help in these cases. Its legendary bloopers are often no worse than the errors made by hard-pressed humans. Machine translation has proved helpful in more urgent situations as well. When Haiti was devastated by an earthquake in January, aid teams poured in to the shattered island, speaking dozens of languages — but not Haitian Creole. How could a trapped survivor with a cellphone get usable information to rescuers? If he had to wait for a Chinese or Turkish or an English interpreter to turn up he might be dead before being understood. Ca…

published on: Guardian

More than a lingua franca, the rapid adoption of 'decaffeinated English', according to the man who coined the term 'Globish', makes it the world's most widely spoken language.
The House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee has just published a report Global Security: UK-US Relations whose headline conclusion (The "Special Relationship" is Dead) interests me. This, it seems to me, is potentially another milestone in the evolution of the phenomenon I've occasionally referred to on this blog as "Globish". Full disclosure: for the past four years, I've been working on a book, Globish: How the English Language Became the World's Language, which argues that a seismic shift in the foundations of our lingua franca has transformed it from an expression of Anglo-American cultural sovereignty into a supra-national phenomenon, with its own powerful inner dynamic. Penguin Books will shortly publish this in the UK, and I'm…

Published on: NYTimes

The F.B.I.’s collection of wiretapped phone calls and intercepted e-mail has been soaring in recent years, but the bureau is failing to review “significant amounts” of such material partly for lack of translators, according to a Justice Department report released Monday. “Not reviewing such material increases the risk that the F.B.I. will not detect information in its possession that may be important to its counterterrorism and counterintelligence efforts,” said the report, which was issued by the office of the department’s inspector general, Glenn A. Fine.In a statement, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said that it was working to reduce its backlog of unreviewed audio recordings and electronic documents, and that it continued seeking to hire or contract with more linguists.“The F.B.I. remains committed to reviewing all foreign language material in a timely manner and setting priorities to ensure that the most important material receives the most immediate att…